Chapter - 4 Transaction Processing PDF

Chapter 4
Introduction to Transaction
Processing Concepts and Theory
Adapted from the slides of “Fundamentals of Database Systems” (Elmasri

et al., 2003)
1
Chapter Outline
 Introduction to Transaction Processing
 Transaction and System Concepts
 Desirable Properties of Transactions
 Characterizing Schedules based on Recoverability
 Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability
 Transaction Support in SQL
2
1. Introduction to Transaction Processing (1)
 Single-User System: At most one user at a time can use

the system.
 Multiuser System: Many users can access the system
concurrently.
 Concurrency
 Interleaved processing: concurrent execution of
processes is interleaved in a single CPU
 Parallel processing: processes are concurrently executed
in multiple CPUs.
3
Introduction to Transaction Processing (2)
 A Transaction: logical unit of database processing

that includes one or more access operations (read -retrieval,
write - insert or update, delete).
 A transaction (set of operations) may be stand-
alone specified in a high level language like SQL submitted
interactively, or may be embedded within a program.
 Transaction boundaries: Begin and End transaction.
 An application program may contain several
transactions separated by the Begin and End
transaction boundaries.
4
SIMPLE MODEL OF A DATABASE (for purposes

of discussing transactions):
 A database - collection of named data items

 Granularity of data - a field, a record , or a whole disk
block (Concepts are independent of granularity)
 Basic operations are read and write
 read_item(X): Reads a database item named X into a
program variable. To simplify our notation, we assume
that the program variable is also named X.
 write_item(X): Writes the value of program variable X
into the database item named X.
5
READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS:
 Basic unit of data transfer from the disk to the computer
main memory is one block.
 Data item (what is read or written):
 the field of some record in the database,
 a larger unit such as a record or even a whole block.
 read_item(X) command includes the following
steps:
1. Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.
2. Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if that
disk block is not already in some main memory buffer).
3. Copy item X from the buffer to the program variable
named X.
6
READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS (cont.):

 write_item(X) command includes the following
steps:
1. Find the address of the disk block that contains item
X.
2. Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if
that disk block is not already in some main memory
buffer).
3. Copy item X from the program variable named X
into its correct location in the buffer.
4. Store the updated block from the buffer back to disk
(either immediately or at some later point in time).
7
Two sample transactions. (a) Transaction T1.
(b) Transaction T2.
8
Why Concurrency Control is needed:

 The Lost Update Problem.
This occurs when two transactions that access the
same database items have their operations
interleaved in a way that makes the value of some
database item incorrect.
 The Temporary Update (or Dirty Read) Problem.
This occurs when one transaction updates a database
item and then the transaction fails for some reason.
The updated item is accessed by another transaction
before it is changed back to its original value.
9
Some problems that occur when concurrent execution
is uncontrolled. (a) The lost update problem.
10
Some problems that occur when concurrent execution
is uncontrolled. (b) The temporary update problem.
11
Why Concurrency Control is needed (cont.):
 The Incorrect Summary Problem .
If one transaction is calculating an aggregate summary
function on a number of records while other transactions
are updating some of these records, the aggregate
function may calculate some values before they are
updated and others after they are updated.
 The unrepeatable Read Problem:

Transaction T reads the same item twice and the item is
changed by another transaction T’ between the two
reads.
12
Some problems that occur when concurrent execution is
uncontrolled. (c) The incorrect summary problem.
13
Why recovery is needed:
(What causes a Transaction to fail)
1. A computer failure (system crash): A hardware or
software error occurs in the computer system during
transaction execution. If the hardware crashes, the
contents of the computer’s internal memory may be
lost.
2. A transaction or system error : Some operation in the
transaction may cause it to fail, such as integer overflow
or division by zero. Transaction failure may also occur
because of erroneous parameter values or because of
a logical programming error. In addition, the user may
interrupt the transaction during its execution.
14
Why recovery is needed (cont.):
3. Local errors or exception conditions detected by the
transaction:
- certain conditions necessitate cancellation of the
transaction. For example, data for the transaction may not
be found. A condition, such as insufficient account balance
in a banking database, may cause a transaction, such as a
fund withdrawal from that account, to be canceled.
- a programmed abort in the transaction causes it to fail.
4. Concurrency control enforcement: The concurrency
control method may decide to abort the transaction, to be
restarted later, because it violates serializability or because
several transactions are in a state of deadlock (see
Chapter 5).
15
Why recovery is needed (cont.):

5. Disk failure: Some disk blocks may lose their data
because of a read or write malfunction or because of
a disk read/write head crash. This may happen during
a read or a write operation of the transaction.
6. Physical problems and catastrophes: This refers
to an endless list of problems that includes power or
air-conditioning failure, fire, theft, sabotage,
overwriting disks or tapes by mistake, and mounting
of a wrong tape by the operator.
16
2 . Transaction and System Concepts (1)
 A transaction is an atomic unit of work that is either

completed in its entirety or not done at all. For recovery
purposes, the system needs to keep track of when the
transaction starts, terminates, and commits or aborts.
 Transaction states:
 Active state
 Partially committed state
 Committed state
 Failed state
 Terminated State
17
State transition diagram illustrating the states for
transaction execution.
18
Transaction and System Concepts (2)
Recovery manager keeps track of the following
operations:
 begin_transaction: This marks the beginning of
 read or write: These specify read or write operations on
the database items
 end_transaction:
 This specifies that read and write transaction
operations have ended and marks the end limit of
 may be necessary to check whether the changes
introduced by the transaction can be permanently
applied to the database or whether the transaction has
to be aborted because it violates concurrency control or
for some other reason.
19
Recovery manager keeps track of the following
operations (cont):
 commit_transaction: This signals a successful end of
the transaction so that any changes (updates) executed
by the transaction can be safely committed to the
database and will not be undone.
 rollback (or abort): This signals that the transaction
has ended unsuccessfully, so that any changes or
effects that the transaction may have applied to the
database must be undone.
20
Recovery techniques use the following operators:

 undo: Similar to rollback except that it applies to a
single operation rather than to a whole transaction.
 redo: This specifies that certain transaction
operations must be redone to ensure that all the
operations of a committed transaction have been
applied successfully to the database.
21
The System Log
 Log or Journal :
 The log keeps track of all transaction operations that
affect the values of database items.
 This information may be needed to permit recovery
from transaction failures.
 The log is kept on disk  not affected by any type of
failure except for disk or catastrophic failure.
 In addition, the log is periodically backed up to
archival storage (tape) to guard against such
catastrophic failures.
22
The System Log (cont):
Types of log record:
1. [start_transaction,T]: Records that transaction T has started
execution.
2. [write_item,T,X,old_value,new_value]: Records that
transaction T has changed the value of database item X from
old_value to new_value.
3. [read_item,T,X]: Records that transaction T has read the
value of database item X.
4. [commit,T]: Records that transaction T has completed
successfully, and affirms that its effect can be committed
(recorded permanently) to the database.
5. [abort,T]: Records that transaction T has been aborted.
23
The System Log (cont):

 Protocols for recovery that avoid cascading
rollbacks do not require that READ operations be
written to the system log, whereas other protocols
require these entries for recovery.
 Strict protocols require simpler WRITE entries that

do not include new_value.
24
Recovery using log records:
 If the system crashes, we can recover to a consistent database
state by examining the log and using one of the techniques
described in Chapter 6.
 Because the log contains a record of every write operation that
changes the value of some database item, it is possible to undo
the effect of these write operations of a transaction T by tracing
backward through the log and resetting all items changed by a
write operation of T to their old_values.
 We can also redo the effect of the write operations of a
transaction T by tracing forward through the log and setting all
items changed by a write operation of T (that did not get done
permanently) to their new_values.
25
Commit Point of a Transaction:
 Definition: A transaction T reaches its commit point when
 all its operations that access the database have been
executed successfully and
 the effect of all the transaction operations on the
database has been recorded in the log.
 Beyond the commit point, the transaction is said to be
committed, and its effect is assumed to be permanently
recorded in the database. The transaction then writes an entry
[commit,T] into the log.
 Roll Back of transactions: Needed for transactions that have
a [start_transaction,T] entry into the log but no commit entry
[commit,T] into the log.
26
3. Desirable Properties of Transactions (1)
ACID properties:
 Atomicity: A transaction is an atomic unit of
processing; it is either performed in its entirety
or not performed at all.
 Consistency preservation: A correct execution

of the transaction must take the database from
one consistent state to another.
27
Desirable Properties of Transactions (2)
ACID properties (cont.):

 Isolation: A transaction should appear as though it is
being executed in isolation from other transaction. That
is, the execution of a transaction should not be
interfered with by any other transaction executing
concurrently.
 Durability or permanency: Once a transaction

changes the database and the changes are committed,
these changes must never be lost because of
subsequent failure.
28
4. Characterizing Schedules based on
Recoverability (1)
 Transaction schedule or history:
 When transactions are executing concurrently in an
interleaved fashion
 The order of execution of operations from the various
transactions forms  a transaction schedule (or history).
 A schedule (or history) S of n transactions T1, T2, ..., Tn :

 Constraint : for each transaction Ti that participates in S,
the operations of T1 in S must appear in the same order
in which they occur in T1.
 However, that operations from other transactions Tj can be
interleaved with the operations of Ti in S.
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Characterizing Schedules based on
Recoverability (2)
 Notation:
Notation Description
ri(X) read_item(X) - transaction Ti
wi(X) write_item(X) - transaction Ti
ci commit - transaction Ti
ai abort - transaction Ti
Recoverability (3)
 Example (1):
 Sa: r1(X); r2(X); w1(X); r1(Y); w2(X); w1(Y);

Recoverability (4)
 Example (2):
abort;
 Sb: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); w2(X); r1(Y); a1;

Recoverability (5)
 Two operations in a schedule are said to
conflict if they satisfy all:
 (1) they belong to different transactions.
 (2) they access the same item X.
 (3) at least one of the operation is a write_item(X)
Recoverability (6)
 Example (1):
 conflict:
 r1(X) and w2(X)
 r2(X) and w1(X)
 w1(X) and w2(X)
 Not conflict:
 r1(X) and r2(X)
 r1(Y) and w2(X)
 r1(X) and w1(X)
 …
Recoverability (7)
 Example (2):
 Sb: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); w2(X); r1(Y); a1;
 Conflict:
 r1(X) and w2(X)
 w1(X) and r2(X)
 w1(X) and w2(X)
Recoverability (8)
Schedules classified on recoverability:
 Recoverable schedule: One where no transaction needs
to be rolled back.
A schedule S is recoverable if no transaction T in S commits
until all transactions T’ that have written an item that T reads
have committed.
 Cascadeless schedule: One where every transaction
reads only the items that are written by committed transactions.
Schedules requiring cascaded rollback: A schedule in which
uncommitted transactions that read an item from a failed
transaction must be rolled back.
36
Recoverability (9)
Schedules classified on recoverability (cont.):
 Strict Schedules: A schedule in which a
transaction can neither read or write an item X until
the last transaction that wrote X has committed.
37
Recoverability (10)
 Example of Recoverable schedule :
Sa': r1(X); r2(X); w1(X); r1(Y); w2(X); c2; w1(Y); c1;
 Lost update
 Example of Not Recoverable schedule :

Sc: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); r1(Y); w2(X); c2; a1;
Recoverability (11)
 Example of Cascading Rollback:
Sd: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); r1(Y); w2(X); w1(Y); c1; c2;
 Sd : Recoverable schedule
 Example of Cascadeless schedule:

S’d: r1(X); w1(X); r1(Y); w1(Y); c1; r2(X); w2(X); c2;
5. Characterizing Schedules based on
Serializability (1)
 Serial schedule: A schedule S is serial if, for every
transaction T participating in the schedule, all the
operations of T are executed consecutively in the
schedule. Otherwise, the schedule is called
nonserial schedule.
 Serializable schedule: A schedule S is
serializable if it is equivalent to some serial
schedule of the same n transactions.
40
Serializability (2)
Serial Schedules:
(A) T1 followed by T2 (B) T2 followed by T1
Serializability (3)
Two nonserial Schedules

Serializability (4)
 Result equivalent: Two schedules are called result
equivalent if they produce the same final state of
the database.
 Conflict equivalent: Two schedules are said to be
conflict equivalent if the order of any two conflicting
operations is the same in both schedules.
 Two operations in a schedule are said to conflict if they
belong to different transactions, access the same data
item, and at least one of the two operations is a write_item
operation.
43
Serializability (5)
 Conflict serializable: A schedule S is said to be
conflict serializable if it is conflict equivalent to some
serial schedule S’.
 In such a case, we can reorder the nonconflicting
operations in S until we form the equivalent serial schedule
S’.
44
Serializability (6)
 Being serializable is not the same as being
serial
 Being serializable implies that the schedule is a

correct schedule.
 It will leave the database in a consistent state.
 The interleaving is appropriate and will result in a
state as if the transactions were serially executed, yet
will achieve efficiency due to concurrent execution.
45
Serializability (7)
 Serializability is hard to check.
 Interleaving of operations occurs in an operating
system through some scheduler
 Difficult to determine beforehand how the
operations in a schedule will be interleaved.
46
Serializability (8)
Practical approach:
 Come up with methods (protocols) to ensure
serializability.
 It’s not possible to determine when a schedule
begins and when it ends. Hence, we reduce the
problem of checking the whole schedule to checking
only a committed project of the schedule (i.e.
operations from only the committed transactions.)
 Current approach used in most DBMSs:
 Use of locks with two phase locking
47
Serializability (9)
Testing for conflict serializability
 Precedence graph (serialization graph) G = (N,
E)
 Directed graph
 Set of Nodes: N = {T1, T2, ... , Tn}
 Directed edge: E ={e1, e2, …, em}
 ei: Tj  Tk if one of the operations in Tj appears in

the schedule before some conflicting operation in Tk
Serializability (10)
Testing for conflict serializability (cont.)
 Algorithm
1. For each transaction Ti participating in schedule S,
create a node labeled Ti in the precedence graph.
2. For each case in S where Tj executes a read_item(X)
after Ti executes a write_item(X), create an edge
(Ti→ Tj) in the precedence graph.
3. For each case in S where Tj executes a write_item(X)
after Ti executes a read_item(X), create an edge
(Ti→Tj) in the precedence graph.
Serializability (11)
Testing for conflict serializability (cont.)
 Algorithm (cont.)
4. For each case in S where Tj executes a write_item(X)

after Ti executes a write_item(X), create an edge
(Ti→ Tj) in the precedence graph.
5. The schedule S is serializable if and only if the

precedence graph has no cycles.
Example of Serializability Testing (1)
Serializable
schedule
Serializable
schedule
Not Serializable
schedule
Serializable
schedule
Another example of serializability testing. (a) The
READ and WRITE operations of three transactions T1,
T2, and T3.
55
Another example of serializability testing. (b) Schedule
E.
56
Another example of serializability testing. (c) Schedule
F.
57
58
6. Transaction Support in SQL2 (1)
 A single SQL statement is always considered to be

atomic. Either the statement completes execution
without error or it fails and leaves the database
unchanged.
 With SQL, there is no explicit Begin Transaction
statement. Transaction initiation is done implicitly
when particular SQL statements are encountered.
 Every transaction must have an explicit end
statement, which is either a COMMIT or
ROLLBACK.
59
Transaction Support in SQL2 (2)
Characteristics specified by a SET

TRANSACTION statement in SQL2:
 Access mode: READ ONLY or READ WRITE. The default
is READ WRITE unless the isolation level of READ
UNCOMITTED is specified, in which case READ ONLY is
assumed.
 Diagnostic size n, specifies an integer value n, indicating
the number of conditions that can be held simultaneously in
the diagnostic area. (Supply user feedback information)
60
Characteristics specified by a SET

TRANSACTION statement in SQL2 (cont.):
 Isolation level <isolation>, where <isolation> can be READ
UNCOMMITTED, READ COMMITTED, REPEATABLE
READ or SERIALIZABLE. The default is SERIALIZABLE.
With SERIALIZABLE: the interleaved execution of transactions
will adhere to our notion of serializability. However, if any
transaction executes at a lower level, then serializability may be
violated.
61
Potential problem with lower isolation levels:

 Dirty Read: Reading a value that was written by a
transaction which failed.
 Nonrepeatable Read: Allowing another transaction to write
a new value between multiple reads of one transaction.
A transaction T1 may read a given value from a table.
If another transaction T2 later updates that value and T1
reads that value again, T1 will see a different value.
Consider that T1 reads the employee salary for Smith.
Next, T2 updates the salary for Smith. If T1 reads Smith's
salary again, then it will see a different value for Smith's
salary.
62
Transaction Support in SQL2(5)
Potential problem with lower isolation levels

(cont.):
 Phantoms: New rows being read using the same
read with a condition.
A transaction T1 may read a set of rows from a
table, perhaps based on some condition specified
in the SQL WHERE clause. Now suppose that a
transaction T2 inserts a new row that also satisfies
the WHERE clause condition of T1, into the table
used by T1. If T1 is repeated, then T1 will see a row
that previously did not exist, called a phantom.
63
Sample SQL transaction:
EXEC SQL whenever sqlerror go to UNDO;
EXEC SQL SET TRANSACTION
READ WRITE
DIAGNOSTICS SIZE 5
ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE;
EXEC SQL INSERT
INTO EMPLOYEE (FNAME, LNAME, SSN, DNO, SALARY)
VALUES ('Robert','Smith','991004321',2,35000);
EXEC SQL UPDATE EMPLOYEE
SET SALARY = SALARY * 1.1
WHERE DNO = 2;
EXEC SQL COMMIT;
GOTO THE_END;
UNDO: EXEC SQL ROLLBACK;
THE_END: ...
64
Possible violation of serializabilty:
65

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Chapter 4

Adapted from the slides of “Fundamentals of Database Systems” (Elmasri

 Transaction and System Concepts

 Desirable Properties of Transactions

 Characterizing Schedules based on Recoverability

 Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability

 Transaction Support in SQL

 Single-User System: At most one user at a time can use

 A Transaction: logical unit of database processing

SIMPLE MODEL OF A DATABASE (for purposes

 A database - collection of named data items

READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS (cont.):

Why Concurrency Control is needed:

 The unrepeatable Read Problem:

Why recovery is needed (cont.):

 A transaction is an atomic unit of work that is either

Recovery techniques use the following operators:

The System Log (cont):

 Strict protocols require simpler WRITE entries that

 Consistency preservation: A correct execution

ACID properties (cont.):

 Durability or permanency: Once a transaction

 A schedule (or history) S of n transactions T1, T2, ..., Tn :

 Sa: r1(X); r2(X); w1(X); r1(Y); w2(X); w1(Y);

 Sb: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); w2(X); r1(Y); a1;

 Example of Not Recoverable schedule :

 Example of Cascadeless schedule:

Two nonserial Schedules

 Being serializable implies that the schedule is a

 Set of Nodes: N = {T1, T2, ... , Tn}

 Directed edge: E ={e1, e2, …, em}

 ei: Tj  Tk if one of the operations in Tj appears in

4. For each case in S where Tj executes a write_item(X)

5. The schedule S is serializable if and only if the

 A single SQL statement is always considered to be

Characteristics specified by a SET

Characteristics specified by a SET

Potential problem with lower isolation levels:

Potential problem with lower isolation levels

Possible violation of serializabilty:

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